Introduction
To meet the increasing demand of robust, high turnover, easily and economically available biocatalyst, research is always channelized to get novelty in enzyme or improvement of existing enzymes by engineering at gene and protein level [1]. Enzymes derived from microbial source are generally regarded as safe and they are functional at wide range of temperature, pH, salinity or other extreme conditions. Actinomycetes are one of the most diverse groups of microorganisms that are well characterized and recognized for their metabolic versatility. They play a vital role in decomposition of organic matter, e.g. cellulose, chitin and pectin, therefore, they play an important part in carbon cycle and help to maintain the soil structure…show more content… Continuing advances in sequencing technology and bioinformatics tools make it possible to study the microbial enzyme production by using proteomics and metaproteomics [Pieper]. Actinomycetes have been continuously studied and employed for production of amylases, cellulases, proteases, chitinases, xylanases and pectinase. This review summarized the production of industrially important enzymes by Actinomycetes and representative examples of these enzymes, their characteristics and industrial uses (applications in biomedicine and waste management) are enlisted in Table…show more content… Actinomycetes strains e.g. Streptomyces erumpens and Thermobifida fusca have ability to secrete amylases to the outside of the cells to carry out extracellular digestion [8, 9]. These thermostable enzymes can be used in baking, pharmaceutical, paper and pulp industry. Amylases from some alkaliphilic Actinomycetes strains can be used in detergent formulation to improve the detergency [31]. Amylases from Streptomyces spp. play an important role in biotechnological applications in different industries and having approximately 25% of the demand in the world enzyme